Chicago Public Schools will allow Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley to continue living in Winnetka until his daughter goes to high school. (Antonio Perez, Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Board of Education is disregarding a call by the district's inspector general to rescind the residency waiver it granted its third-highest-ranking schools executive.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel had supported a two-year waiver for Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley so Cawley could continue living in Winnetka until his daughter was ready for high school. Cawley and his wife adopted the 12-year-old girl from Ukraine last year and didn't want to uproot her so soon.

The board approved the waiver in June. Inspector General James Sullivan recently sent board President David Vitale a letter saying the waiver should not have been approved, but on Thursday, Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll said board members have decided to stand by their original decision.

"(Cawley) has a unique set of skills and experiences that are needed for the rigors of this job, and the board has total confidence in the work he has done to date," Carroll said.

But Sullivan said keeping Cawley's waiver throws into question his pursuit of the hundreds of residency violation complaints the inspector general's office investigates against CPS staff each year. Last year, the independent watchdog for CPS received 246 complaints of employees living outside Chicago, leading to 70 violation notices. About 23 CPS staff members, 10 of them teachers, eventually lost their jobs.

"We will have to evaluate whether we can continue to investigate residency allegations if doing so would cause there to be additional appeals, grievances, litigation concerning the propriety of dismissing someone else for a residency violation when one of the heads of the organization has been given what appears to be preferential treatment," Sullivan said. "To have effective rule enforcement, people have to be treated the same."

Emanuel, whose own residency was challenged during his mayoral campaign, has supported the city's long-standing residency requirement, which was plugged as a way to decrease absenteeism and encourage local spending. But the mayor's office said Thursday that it intends to seek an amendment to the controversial residency rule that would allow a waiver for a limited period of time and under special circumstances where the city wishes to hire a candidate from outside Chicago who may need time to relocate.

Cawley, who makes $215,000 a year, oversees the district's day-to-day operations such as finance, transportation, facilities, security and safety. He has been a prominent figure in the district, tackling a recent budget crisis by pushing for a proposal to raise taxes, cutting hundreds of jobs and slashing costs to close a $712 million deficit.

With 30 years of experience in the financial sector, holding executive positions at Motorola and Ameritech International, Cawley most recently served as the managing director for finance and administration at the Academy for Urban School Leadership, an organization whose board was chaired by Vitale and supported by Emanuel for its efforts to turn around failing schools.

Cawley and his wife own a Streeterville condo with another couple. He has said he spends time there when visiting downtown and pays property taxes, but it's not his primary residence.